


seaside improvisation

by burnhounds (LittleDragonPrince)



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe – College/University, Alternate Universe – Modern Day, Alternate Universe – No Pennywise, Aquariums, Child Abuse, Eddie Kaspbrak is a Mess, Eddie Kaspbrak-centric, Emotional Abuse, Everyone Is Gay, Friends to Lovers, Fuck Stephen King, Internalized Homophobia, Lots of Therapy!, M/M, Minor Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh, Minor Mike Hanlon/Stanley Uris, Multi, Overuse of italics, So basically, Sonia Kaspbrak’s A+ parenting, Trauma, but it’s like super minor. it’s like the ghost of internalized homophobia., didn't tag them as individual characters bc this is VERY, my city now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-23
Updated: 2020-01-23
Packaged: 2021-02-19 03:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,864
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22371079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleDragonPrince/pseuds/burnhounds
Summary: Bill was saying something to Eddie, something about checking them in at the front desk, and then his hand was slowly leaving the small of Eddie's back. He wanted to reply to Bill somehow but he couldn't find the words. His head felt full of static, his whole body tense with adrenaline. He could hardly even focus on the anxiety, not when his whole arm was engulfed in searing pain; he was about to follow Bill over to the receptionist when a voice cut through the haze of pain and panic:“Holy shit – Eddie?!” the voice said, which was impossible, because Eddie knew that voice, could never forget that voice, no matter how many years had gone by, he could never – “Is that Eddie fucking Kaspbrak?”He spun on his heel, broken arm clutched miserably to his chest, just to make sure he wasn’t hearing things.He wasn’t. Standing there, beneath the fluorescent lighting of the E.R. waiting room, face lit up with a smile exactly like the one Eddie always remembered him having, was none other than Richie fucking Tozier.--In which Eddie Kaspbrak reunites with his childhood best friend, goes to therapy, and learns a whole lot about horseshoe crabs – (mostly) in that order.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier, Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 9
Kudos: 42





	seaside improvisation

**Author's Note:**

> title [from the poem of the same name](https://66.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lsppv9Bk461r35amyo1_540.jpg) by richard siken
> 
> fun bonus!!!: [the playlist of music i listened to as i wrote this](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiYN2f_sv0hopGbutHQI3hy8rquV4KJg7)
> 
> this started as a promise made to one of my housemates and then spiralled rapidly and messily into a huge multichapter au monstrosity and i’m, like, DEEPLY sorry to everyone for what i’m about to try to do.
> 
> maybe i should be embarrassed abt projecting so hard & so deeply onto a fictional character from a sub-mediocre horror novel but tbh!! stephen king didnt leave me much choice when he made eddie “gay kid raised in new england w/ mommy issues & medical baggage” kaspbrak. this ain’t my fault.
> 
> so here it is. all my cards on the table. the most self-indulgent thing i’ve ever done.
> 
> this one goes out to my housemates mort, ernie, sickle (♡♡♡), & max, with whom i am living in this Clown Franchise Hell (except for u sickle, i know u have taste.) if i can finish this fic, i know together we can finish it: the musical. thanks for being the best found family a guy could ask for. i blame u all fully for this & will never forgive u.

Being an adult with trauma, Eddie thought, was a lot like being the parent to a particularly terrible child.

Not a literal child, of course. A metaphorical one, one that lived inside of Eddie and was screaming nearly non-stop. Any time something went wrong, even ever-so-slightly, or any time Eddie touched a surface without knowing it had been scrubbed clean first, or sometimes for seemingly no reason at all, a part of him would begin to completely shut down. _This is wrong, wrong, wrong_ , it would scream, a child collapsed on the floor of the grocery store, beating its fists bruise-green on the linoleum, _This is wrong, and I want to go home._ And Eddie, like any good, long-suffering parent, would have to stop and tell this part of himself _I understand you’re upset, but can we not do this in the middle of the Target dairy aisle._

It was exhausting, having to be your own babysitter. It was exhausting when every little thing was a crisis, and every little comment someone made was personal, and every day was just a series of arguments. Fifteen minutes spent deliberating whether it was worth it to get out of bed. Thirty minutes wasted trying to decide between eating nothing for breakfast and being hungry until lunch, or shoveling a handful of Lucky Charms into his mouth and a cold Pop-Tart into his bag and spiraling about how unhealthy that was for the rest of the day. The entire walk from his dorm to first period spent berating himself for taking so long just to get ready, for God’s sake, this is the fourth time he’s been late this week.

The worst part was that nobody else seemed to live like this. Eddie started college later than most, entering Freshman year at the ripe old age of twenty-one. The realization that he was going to have a roommate, and that roommate was most likely going to be eighteen, and _definitely_ judging him for being _not eighteen,_ hit Eddie like a Mack-truck right as he finished getting the fitted sheets onto his twin bed. The ensuing panic drove Eddie to reorganize his dresser full of clothes at least three separate times, wipe his entire desk down with disinfectant wipes a total of one and a half times, and consider dropping out no less than once every five seconds.

Eddie was sure that his roommate was going to hate him the moment he walked through the door, but then Bill had shown up – good-natured, lion-hearted Bill – and Eddie had felt stupid for a whole new host of reasons.

Because Bill didn’t care that the top shelf of Eddie’s desk looked like a home pharmacy. He didn’t care that Eddie kept a bottle of hand sanitizer on his bedside table, and he didn’t care when Eddie _used_ that hand sanitizer right after they finished shaking hands, a bad habit he only ever fell into when he was feeling extra stressed. He didn’t comment on the way the room smelled like Lysol, and when Eddie started reorganizing his dresser and confessed to having done it three times before, Bill snorted out a laugh – but it didn’t sound cruel.

“You’re way less of an asshole than I expected you to be,” Eddie told him, once they had both finished unpacking and settling in. They were sitting across from each other on their respective beds – Bill with his back against the headboard and his legs sprawled out, Eddie criss-cross-apple-sauce – eating Thai food they’d had delivered to the dormitory.

That had made Bill laugh, too, which caused Bill to nearly spill green chicken curry all over his bed, which only made Bill laugh even _more_. “Well, thanks _,_ I guess,” he said eventually, nose crinkled fondly, “Why did y-yuh-you think I was gonna b-be an asshole, though?”

“I’m, uh – couldn’t go to college for a few extra years,” Eddie had replied, feeling suddenly sheepish, though Bill seemed trust-worthy enough, “I’m twenty-one. I was kinda worried you’d be, like, weird. And a dick about it.”

“ _Oh,_ ” said Bill, and then he shot Eddie the sort of smile Eddie would eventually learn was unique to Bill: shit-eating and warm at the same time, like he and Eddie were both in on a joke nobody else could know, “I’m also – I mean, I took a gap year. I turn twuh-tw-twenty in, luh-like… Two months. So don’t worry about it.”

Eddie hadn’t bothered trying to explain to Bill that ‘not worrying about it’ was an impossible task for him, but he hadn’t needed to. Over the course of that first year, Bill was steadily exposed to every single one of Eddie’s neuroses, every bullshit thing Eddie could somehow get upset about, and he barely batted an eye. So even though it sometimes felt shocking, how quickly the two of them had slotted into each other’s lives, in hindsight it was only natural.

Weeks and months and eventually years went by, and Bill and Eddie were still roommates, still best friends, still eating Thai takeout in bed against their better judgement. Bill declared himself a creative writing major one and a half weeks into their third semester as college students. Three weeks after _that_ , Eddie changed his nursing major (which he had declared at the end of his very first semester, in an act of uncharacteristic confidence but honestly-kinda-predictable hubris) to microbiology. For the most part, these were the things which stayed the same, even as every other part of their lives changed.

They were both third-years now, and Bill had a part-time job at a local bookstore. He had a position as a key contributor and editor-in-chief to _In Abeyance,_ one of the school’s monthly writing zines. He had a handful of friends who he’d go to bars with, and a girlfriend named Audra whose apartment he’d been staying over at more and more often these days. Bill had a lot of good things going for him, and Eddie was happy for him – he _was_ , really – because Eddie had –

Well.

Eddie had Bill, and a few acquaintances he could be friendly with in class. Eddie had a voicemail that’d been full for almost a month straight now, because he refused to answer any of his mom’s calls. Eddie had panic attacks every time he tried to step foot in the campus-affiliated hospital, bad enough that he had to change his major. Eddie had a shelf full of medication that he knew, logically, and not even a deep down kind of logically, he didn’t need. Eddie had trauma, and being an adult with trauma was a lot like not being an adult at all.

Eddie, for all his flaws (paranoid, hypochondriac, vindictive, a terrible Pictionary teammate) was not naïve. He knew he was traumatized, even if the word still felt like an ill-fitting sweater sometimes, even if he had never been able to say the word out loud. He knew his relationship with his mother wasn’t… great, and that his relationship with doctors was even worse. He knew his childhood wasn’t a good one, and he maybe even kind of knew it wasn’t _normal_ , either. Objectively, Eddie knew he was traumatized – he just didn’t know what he was meant to do about it.

So for now he just – wasn’t. He wasn’t doing anything about it, and sure, living like this was exhausting, but it was fine. He was fine. At the very least, he was managing, and Eddie knew he could learn to be fine with that.

\--

As college students, it was inevitable that Bill and Eddie’s lives would fall into a routine of some sort. Bill spent most of Thursday, almost _all_ of Friday and Saturday, and just a little bit of Sunday working on _In Abeyance_ , and the rest of his weekdays were preoccupied by work, class, pub crawls, and Audra in various configurations.

During the busiest points in the semester, Eddie could go entire days without seeing Bill at all. Sometimes it felt like Bill always needed to be in motion, always needed some valiant goal to be working towards. It was the kind of productivity Eddie might have admired, if he didn’t know Bill as well as he did. As it was, Eddie had once watched Bill leave a dirty pot to soak on top of a still-lit stove, not realizing his mistake until the entire floor was drenched in _boiling hot_ and soapy water. What looked like drive and ambition to most people was really just Bill’s compulsive, scatter-brained need to do absolutely everything at once.

Eddie, however, was decidedly less busy – he mostly bounced between classes, the dorm, and the science wing of the library, except on every other Wednesday. On every other Wednesday, he found himself stuck in the lab for hours at a time – but such was the life of a biology major. He wasn’t one for parties or clubs or anything social, really, but sometimes he would walk four blocks (usually in the dark) to the nearest Domino’s and buy three boxes of cinnamon bread twists to take home and share with Bill. The employees who worked the graveyard shift could refer to him by name now.

Most nights, though, they’d cook dinner together, in their shitty little kitchenette (as third-years they had racked up enough housing points to upgrade to a dorm with a living room – still no private bathroom, though) with whatever scraps of groceries they had. When both of their respective workloads got too heavy, they ordered take-out instead – Bill would roll the shittiest joint, and Eddie would take exactly one hit before hacking up a lung and remembering exactly why he didn’t smoke.

The one _true_ staple of their routine, which had always managed to stay just the right amount of unpredictable that it didn’t drive Eddie completely insane, was their once-a-month visits to the nearby aquarium.

It was important to note that 'nearby’ was a relative term. The aquarium was a good half-hour drive away from their spot on campus, though it could easily take close to fifty full minutes if the New York traffic was bad, which it _always_ was. How it became such a regular part of their lives was a mystery to Eddie to this very day.

The first time they’d gone was just a few weeks into their first semester of their first year. It was before Bill had any of his friends or work obligations, and he was starting to go a little stir crazy from the isolation of the dorm room. As for Eddie – honestly, Eddie was okay with spending the whole weekend in the dorm. He’d never lived in a city before, and the idea of trying to explore made his chest ache and his stomach churn.

(Coincidentally, his opinion of the city would wind up changing the same exact day he learned there was a place to get cinnamon bread twists only four blocks away.) 

When Eddie tried to express his reluctance to Bill, however, it only seemed to agitate him more.

“If walking is w-what makes you ay-ay-ang-ah,” Bill’s face twisted up, lips puckered, as if his words were something tangible and sour in his mouth. After a beat, he tried again, “Makes you nervous, I mean, we can always dr-drive.”

“That’s not what I’m – I’m not _nervous_ , fuck off,” Eddie snapped, fully aware that it was maybe the most bullshit thing he’d ever said. He stopped to consider himself, as well as the accidental lie he’d just told, and then said, “At least. I don’t think I am.”

“Y-y-you don’t think _?_ ” said Bill with a laugh and an incredulous tilt of the head.

“I mean, obviously I don’t think!” Eddie blurted out, voice almost in a shout. He _knew_ that wasn't how Bill meant it, but he wanted to make the joke anyway if only to make himself less nervous – it paid off when Bill’s laughter doubled.

 _“Obviously,”_ Bill said once he’d calmed down a little, though his eyes were still laughing, face lit up with one of his patented Bill-smiles. “I’m just saying. For h-how much I’m paying to keep my car on campus, I should fuck-kuh-king use it to go somewhere for once.”

A few Google searches for _things to do in nyc as a broke college student_ later, and Eddie was piling into the passenger seat of Bill’s Subaru on his way to the aquarium. From there on out, it became a tradition: on one of the Sundays of the month – it didn’t matter which one – the two of them would drive to the aquarium in the morning and spend the day there. It was always a gamble _exactly_ how long they’d end up staying, and they never saw the exhibits in the same order, but there were a few they always made sure to check out even if they were there for just an hour or two.

The sea turtles, for example, were something both Eddie and Bill loved, and thus theirs was usually the last (and sometimes also the first) tank they’d go to see. Eddie’s personal favorite was the Atlantic sea nettle tank, partly for the animals themselves, languid and ghost-like as they bumped against each other in the water, but mostly for the room they were kept in. The only light source was the tank itself, which stood as a pillar in the center of the room and glowed a gentle lavender. The rest of the room was a velvety black. It was a calming room to be in, and Eddie didn’t find many things _calming_ , so it was easy to think of it as his favorite.

Bill, on the other hand, loved The Touch Tank more than he loved anything else in the aquarium. Eddie always thought of it like that: _The Touch Tank_ , all three T's capitalized. The reason Eddie made sure to think of The Touch Tank with such gravitas, such importance, was simple: he fucking hated it.

Alright, even Eddie could admit that was a little harsh – he didn’t _always_ hate it. Sometimes it was honestly pretty cool, and most of the time it was at least okay. Sort of gross, but okay. Little kids liked to flock to it, crowded around the semi-circle of water and hooping excitedly to one another about the sea stars and dog whelks, the mermaid purses and horseshoe crabs. Bill, who was almost preternaturally good with children, would somehow find a way to _join in,_ letting the kids yammer away about the marine biology facts they had only half-learned with a look on his face like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever heard.

The rotation of aquarium employees that were in charge of The Touch Tank, who never looked older than twenty-five and _always_ looked beleaguered, grew to like Bill for this exact reason. Eddie wasn’t sure if he noticed all the grateful little smiles the employees would shoot him from across the other side of the tank, but if he _did_ notice, then Eddie was _absolutely_ sure that was another big part of why Bill liked The Touch Tank so much.

On some days though – bad days – Eddie couldn't stand The Touch Tank at all. The water was freezing cold, cold enough to make his hands go numb. The kids were loud and pushy, and they somehow always managed to get Eddie's clothes soaking wet. Not to mention the animals themselves – so what if Eddie had never technically _heard_ of someone catching a disease from a starfish, that didn't mean it wasn't possible, and nevertheless they were just plain _gross._

Eddie was probably a bad biology student, all things considered.

He was not, however, a bad friend, and so he always accompanied Bill to see The Touch Tank, even on his bad days. He just wouldn't actually touch anything, and Bill wouldn't try to force him to, because Bill wasn't a bad friend either.

"I can't believe we're already halfway through college," said Bill as they made their way through the shark room, which wasn’t really a _room_ so much as a long, dark hallway. One wall was lined with a series of placards listing information about the sharks: their species, their diets, their natural habitats. The opposite wall _was_ the shark tank itself, and the illumination of the water through the thick glass cast a blue glow over everything. “After this, it’s only like – one, one more year? It feels like we only s-stuh-started college a week ago.”

“Christ, I know,” Eddie said, trying to keep the groan out of his voice, because he _did_ know, and he hated it, “I swear time works fucking differently in this city.”

“I think p-probably everyone feels that way about where they go to school,” they finally reached the end of the shark hall, and in the yellow-white lighting of The Touch Tank room (officially known as the _Explore The Seashore_ exhibit) Eddie could see Bill flash him a smile, “But I get you.”

They were on their first aquarium trip of the year, meaning the semester had only just begun to pick up speed. Eddie wasn’t buried under any homework yet, wasn’t trying and failing to study for any tests, but he could tell he was going to be soon. School was one of the last things Eddie wanted to think about, second only to the fact that school was almost _over_ for him. For whatever reason, Bill didn’t seem to feel the same way.

“I can’t wait to finally be a r-ruh- _r_ - _real_ fucking adult,” Bill said with an over-the-top sigh that slumped his shoulders, as if the very thought filled him with relief. When Eddie didn’t respond, like Bill clearly expected him to do, the goofily elated expression on his face melted into something like concern, “Are you not excited to grah-graduate?”

“Not really,” Eddie answered honestly. They were close enough to The Touch Tank now that Eddie could see the crowd of six or seven kids gathered around it. He didn’t bother trying to lie – Bill would either see through it but refuse to pry out of respect, which always made Eddie feel guilty as Hell, or he would take Eddie for his word and apologize for doubting him, which was even _worse_.

Bill was quiet for a moment, clearly mulling Eddie’s answer over. He sucked his lower lip between his teeth and cocked his head to the right before asking, voice curious and kind, “How come?”

Bill couldn’t possibly understand what Eddie was afraid of, because Bill didn’t know about Derry. He didn’t know that Eddie’s mom fully expected him to move back in as soon as college finished up, and then never leave again. But Eddie _did_ know that. He couldn’t forget it, try as he might – his mother’s constant texts, and calls, and sometimes even e-mails made sure of that. Having to go back to living in that home – in that _town_ – was Eddie’s worst nightmare, but as of right now he had no other options. As soon as college ended he’d have to find a place to go, and he knew that place might have to be Derry.

“They look a little weird, and the name ‘spider crab’ makes them seem scary, I know, but these guys are totally harmless!”

The voice of The Touch Tank attendee, clearly mid-spiel, interrupted Eddie’s train of thought. He and Bill were standing in front of the tank now, close enough to reach out and place a hand into the water, or touch the shell of the animal the employee was currently holding aloft. Eddie recognized it as a nine-spined spider crab, with its spindly legs and narrow face. They were close enough that Eddie could even see the fuzzy layer of algae covering its mottled brown shell; he curled his lip in an expression of disgust that he’d normally suppress.

“They’re something called a ‘decorator crab,’ which means – well, can you guys feel that soft stuff on its back?” the employee said as the hand holding the spider crab moved in an arc over the tank so everyone could feel. Bill did so happily. Eddie shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his sweatshirt instead. “That’s algae and little bits of debris! The spider crab puts that all on its shell on purpose. Can anyone guess why it would do that?”

“I don’t know how you can stand to touch these things,” Eddie said, loud enough to be heard over the crowd of children around them, because it was easier to complain about The Touch Tank than it was to answer Bill’s question.

At first Bill responded by glancing at Eddie out of the corner of his eyes, looking like he wasn’t sure if he should be amused or exasperated, and this expression was the compromise between the two. “We don’t have to cuh-come to the touch tank every tim-me-me we come here, dude. If you hate it _that_ much.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” Eddie hurried to correct Bill as the anxious, self-loathing part of himself reared its ugly head. He didn’t want Bill to feel bad. “It’s your favorite. I just… I just ca – won’t touch any of them.”

“Do you mind me asking why?” The employee was describing the natural predators of the spider crab now, the animal held at arm’s length over the water so everyone could see and feel it as they pleased. Its long legs were cutting slow semi-circle shapes into the air as it writhed in her hand. If Eddie looked close enough, he could see the air frothing around its mouth. “You’re a biolog-g-g-gy major, so I don’t really… get it, I guess.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, which wasn’t an answer. Bill, saint that he was, didn’t point this out to Eddie or push for anything more. He just stuck one hand into the water of the tank to run a finger over one of the sea stars (a sugar starfish, Eddie could tell) and waited for Eddie to continue. “I’m, I’m a biology major, yes, but specifically _micro_ biology. I know a lot about – about germs. And bacteria. I don’t need to catch some weird _mollusk disease_ from the aquarium, okay.”

Bill looked over his shoulder to blink at Eddie, and then lifted his (dripping wet) hand from the tank to point across the room at a hand-washing station in the corner.

“There’s soap o-over there, if that’s what you need,” he said, sounding a little patronizing, in the way that only Bill could sound patronizing, “They actually encou-our-ourage kids to wash their hands after touching the, the animals here.”

“Yeah, I know, but –,” Eddie rolled his eyes, hoped it was melodramatic enough to make his anxiety comical instead of concerning, “I don’t know what kind of soap they’re using, so what if it’s not strong enough to kill all the bacteria. What if it’s just really cheap soap, right, and –,” w _hat if the soap is a kind you’re allergic to, you’ve always had such sensitive skin, Eddie, you’ve always got to be careful,_ “– then my hands are just gross for the rest of the day. I won’t be able to touch any food, or my mouth, or my eyes.”

Bill turned to look at Eddie head on now, face-to-face, and – Goddammit, Eddie knew that look: the little crease between his brows, the slight tug at just one corner of his mouth, eyes all sad and narrowed like he was thinking very hard about what to say to make Eddie feel better. It was Bill’s Big Brother Look.

The Big Brother Look didn’t work because Bill was particularly _good_ at being comforting – he wasn’t. The only person he had any experience comforting was his _actual_ brother, Georgie, and the last time he’d really needed to comfort Georgie, he’d been ten years old and terrified of clowns. As a result, all of his wisdom seemed both condescending and childish, and all of his attempts at being tactful came out awkward. He was just so damn _sincere_ about it, though, that it was impossible to be annoyed at him. In fact, Eddie usually ended up annoyed at _himself_ for not listening.

“Okay, I understand that,” said Bill, and then he paused again to think carefully. Eddie couldn’t stomach looking at his face any longer – all soft and worried – so instead he forced himself to stare at The Touch Tank employee. She was holding a horseshoe crab now, pointing at its underbelly and explaining what book gills were, “I thought the, uh, the fear of germs thing was g-get-getting better? Maybe I shouldn’t have assumed, though, I’m sorry.”

“No,” Eddie quickly said, almost cutting Bill’s apology off in his haste, “No, you’re fine, it’s – it is getting better. Sometimes.”

As if sensing Eddie’s growing discomfort, Bill turned back towards The Touch Tank, where the horseshoe crab was still flailing in the air, held up by the employee and no longer belly-up. He reached one hand out to graze his fingers against the top of its shell and exchanged a polite nod with the employee as he did so. Maybe she recognized him from one of the dozens of times they’d come before.

“His tail kind of looks like a stingray’s stinger, but it’s not dangerous at all,” she was explaining to the gaggle of kids staring up at her, utterly rapt, “Instead, he uses it to get back on his feet, in case he’s ever knocked over by something like a wave.”

“Have you, uh,” Bill spoke without looking back at Eddie, “Not to overstep, but – have you ever considered going t-to therapy?”

“In what way is that _not_ overstepping?” Eddie snapped before he could stop himself. Bill turned to face him, his eyes apologetic, but Eddie could tell from the grim set of his mouth that he was about to double down on his advice; Eddie cut him off before he could, “Sorry, I didn’t – sorry.”

“You don’t have to apologize,” Bill said. Eddie knew that he meant it.

“Yeah. Uh. Sorry,” Eddie flinched as the word left his mouth compulsively, and then shook his head to try to clear his head, “Look, if I decide it’s bad enough I need therapy, I’ll go, okay? But you don’t need to, like, make that happen. I can take care of myself.”

“I nuh-know,” The hardness in Bill’s face softened, but Eddie almost wished it hadn’t. It’d be easier if he was angry. “I’m sorry, really. I just want you to be – to be happy, you know.”

“I know,” Eddie said honestly, “Thank you.”

Bill nodded at him with a smile, and Eddie smiled back, and from there on the aquarium trip continued as normal. After The Touch Tank they saw the river otters, then the South Atlantic corals, and then finally the sea nettles. As he stood in the purple glow of the jellyfish tank, he tried not to feel guilty or empty or scared. He tried to focus on the relief he felt instead, buried underneath all the terrible feelings, because after The Touch Tank Bill had forgotten all about talking about graduation. Bill didn’t know about Derry, and Eddie planned to keep it that way.

\--

The fall that Eddie found out all of his medications were fake was the fall he started filling out college applications.

He’d only tried to talk to his mom about the idea once before. It was nearing the end of his Junior year in high school, some time in either late April or early May. He had spent the last two weeks trying to prepare for this moment in whatever way he could – he shoved half a dozen pamphlets from the college counselor’s office into his backpack and wrote a bullet point list of pros and cons on the Notes app of his phone. He decided to broach the subject with her on a Friday, because on Fridays he was the one to cook dinner, and that always put her in a better mood.

“So. Mom. There was, uh, something I actually wanted to talk to you about, maybe,” he said, fumbling through the start of the speech he’d spent hours practicing to himself in the mirror. He waited until she nodded across the table at him to continue speaking, “I was thinking, uh – well, I’m gonna be graduating soon…ish, by next year at least, and – and everyone else in my grade is already looking at colleges. We haven’t talked about it yet. At all. So I thought we, uh, could?”

Without replying, his mother placed her silverware onto her plate with a clatter – Eddie winced away at the noise despite himself. Dinner was already halfway through; Eddie had spent most of it barely picking at the beef potpie and sweet corn he’d prepared, but her plate was nearly cleared. This didn’t surprise Eddie in the slightest – it was her favorite, after all.

“Alright, Eddie,” she eventually said as she picked her knife and fork back up, “What is it you want to talk about?”

“Uh,” Eddie swallowed thickly, feeling both at a loss for words and out of breath all at once, “I just sa – I want to go to college?”

His mother’s face creased with worry – or possibly annoyance, it could be hard to tell the two emotions apart when it came to her. Her eyes flickered back down to her plate as she began to eat again, and she refused to look at Eddie as she spoke:

“What do you think you would study?”

It was one of the last things he expected his mother to ask, and for a moment he had floundered mutely, hands clenching and unclenching in his lap, until he found his footing again – “I was thinking, well, I’m – uh – nursing? I mean, I was thinking I could study nursing. I already know so much about, about medicine and sickness and, so, I could be good at that, I think.”

“Nursing?” his mother sounded aghast, “You plan on spending all your time in a _hospital?_ ”

“I – I could be helping people, mom,” Eddie said, and he could _hear_ it, the desperate edge to his voice; his eyes weren’t burning yet but they would be soon. He took a moment to compose himself, and in that short beat of silence the room felt so heavy it could have crushed him completely, “I could be really good at it, too.”

“A _hospital_ ,” she repeated with a scoff, as if she had barely heard Eddie speak at all. Her knife scraped against her plate and Eddie flinched again, “Your immune system – sweetie, _please_ tell me you’re joking. You’d get sick so quickly working in a hospital!”

“It was just an idea!” Eddie shot back, and then immediately tried to reign himself back in. His face was flushed, his hands shaking – but he couldn’t back down yet, “It was – sorry – it was really only an idea, though. I could do something else in college.”

“Don’t raise your voice at me, please,” she said, just like Eddie knew she would.

“I’m sorry, mom. I didn’t mean to.”

For a moment, neither one of them spoke. His mother had gone back to staring at her food. Eddie shoveled a couple forkfuls of corn into his mouth and tried to ignore the way he could feel his pulse racing.

“So you don’t have a plan?” she finally broke the silence right as her eyes flickered back up to Eddie’s face. Pinned by her gaze, he couldn’t bring himself to speak – couldn’t risk making her mad again – so he simply nodded at her. She hummed lowly, then said, “College costs a lot of money, you know.”

“I…I know,” Eddie answered her, even though he knew it wasn’t a question, “But the college counselor at school helps people figure out financial aid and that sort of thing all the time – and, and she even said I could try for a scholarship, my grades are good enough –,”

“What if you drop out?” his jaw snapped closed as she cut him off; being interrupted wasn’t a surprise, but it still made him feel wary, “If you _do_ end up getting sick and needing to come home – well, that’s quite a lot of money to waste.”

The word _waste_ was like a blow right to Eddie’s sternum, and the pain was physical – it knocked all the wind out of him, made him ball his hands into fists, twisting up the fabric of his jeans. He didn’t dare hesitate before responding, his teeth ground together to keep his voice steady, “I’m not going to get sick.”

“You can’t possibly know that for sure,” his mother had said with a gentle shake of her head. She made it sound so simple, the way she said it. She always managed to make things seem simple where Eddie thought they would be complicated and hard.

“I’m not going to drop out,” Eddie tried instead. His mom shook her head again, but she was frowning now.

“You don’t know that either,” she said. Her eyes were wide and worried as she stared at Eddie, and he couldn’t help but shift uncomfortably in his seat, “What if you get sick, or what if you have one of those – one of those anxious fits you have sometimes?”

Eddie’s blood ran cold, and before he could stop himself he blurted out, “That’s not going to make me drop out either, mom.” His voice broke halfway through, and he knew he must have looked close to crying then – because then his mother was tearing up, too. She always started crying when he did.

“How can you be sure?” she snapped, but her voice wobbled too much to sound anything but sad, “It’s made you give up on so many other things. Track and field, or those lifeguard certification classes, or – or that afterschool program you were so adamant about a few years back!”

“This…” Eddie stopped and wiped at his face with the palm of his hand. Technically she was right, and she hadn’t even named every example she could have. It wasn’t uncommon for Eddie to try something new on a whim, pour himself into it for a few weeks, and then drop out in a fit of panic. “This is different.”

“I want to believe you,” his mother said, and she really sounded like she meant it, “But – sweetie – you have to understand. It’s a big risk to go all the way to college, and I just – I just don’t know if you could handle it.”

Eddie forced himself to swallow the knot in his throat instead of responding. He could tell the argument was winding down, that he had lost, that trying to fight her on this more would only make them both cry. He didn’t have the energy for it all of a sudden. _It’s not worth it,_ he had thought to himself, pushing a pile of beef and carrots and pie crust around on his plate, _she’s probably right, and it’s just not worth it to try to prove her wrong._

“Besides, staying in Derry’s not so bad, is it?” she continued as if she hadn’t noticed his sudden silence, “If you left, we’d have to transfer all your prescriptions to a new pharmacy, and find you a new doctor, and you might have a _roommate_ –,” she shuddered with disgust, “No, I think staying in Derry’s for the best.”

When Eddie decided not to speak again, her brows pinched together in another frown. She put her fork and knife down onto her plate – which she had finally cleared – and leaned her elbows on the table. Distantly, Eddie remembered her telling him never to do that, it was bad manners to put your arms on a dinner table so casually.

“And all I want is what’s best for you, Eddie-bear,” she said, and he knew the pet name was the final nail in the conversation’s coffin, “I love you so, _so_ much, and I just want you to be safe.”

“I know, mom,” he said, because he _did_. “I love you, too.”

At that she had smiled at him, and some of the tension had bled out of his shoulders and his spine, and he thought, _this isn’t what I wanted, but I’ll be fine._

And he had been fine. Senior year came and went without the topic ever coming up again, and when the summer after graduation ended and autumn came around, Eddie didn’t leave. He stayed in Derry – stayed in his childhood home, slept in the same bedroom he’d slept in his whole life – and found other ways to occupy his time.

He started cooking more often, for example. When he was home alone he would scour through the pile of dusty old cookbooks his mother stockpiled over the years for a recipe to try. Once he found one that was both interesting and made entirely of ingredients he already had in the house, he would switch the television to the Discovery channel and get to work, peeking through the kitchen doorway into the living room as often as he could to catch glimpses of whatever nature documentary was playing.

His mom finally agreed to let Eddie get a driver’s license when he got a job at a chain pet shop in Derry’s downtown. Over the course of a few months, he went through the process step by step – got his permit, practiced in various parking lots around town, took the test and passed it on his first try – and before he knew it he was driving himself to work every day. It started as a simple cashier job, but eventually Eddie was staying late to take care of the animals, placing orders for new stock and supplies, and making a manager’s salary.

It was a nice, stable job, and Eddie was shockingly good at it, and if sometimes the patrons would ask him when he planned on going to school, what was such a smart young man doing here in Derry still – well, Eddie tried not to let it bother him. It was fine. _Eddie_ was fine.

Which only made what happened next that much worse.

It happened in the pharmacy. If Eddie had gone to college, it would have been the start of his third year. Instead he was in Derry, doing the incredibly routine task of getting his asthma medication refilled, running through a mental list of all the Halloween-themed dog clothes and cat toys the store would need to order before October started. He was perusing the different flavors of cough drops and waiting for the pharmacist to finish up with someone else when a voice called out his name.

“Is that – Eddie? Eddie Kaspbrak?” he frowned as he turned to look for whoever was calling his name; they had sounded surprised, and Eddie couldn’t imagine anyone from Derry who would be _surprised_ to see him at the pharmacy. When he saw who it was, his frown deepened.

“Greta?” Eddie wasn’t confused that she was here, of course – this was her father’s business. He was confused that she was talking to him of her own volition.

Greta Keene had been a grade above him all throughout both middle and high school, and she had made it abundantly clear how she felt about him. She wasn’t the worst of Eddie’s bullies – not by _far_ – but it was still a little jarring to have her speaking to him so politely, staring at him from across the pharmacy like she couldn’t believe her eyes.

“Yeah! Yeah, oh my God, it’s been so long, I almost didn’t recognize you,” she scoffed and shook her head, smiling bemusedly as if, even looking right at him, she still couldn’t fully remember his face, “What – what are you doing here?”

“Uh,” Eddie blinked at her dumbly. There was no way she didn’t know exactly what he was doing there – he’d been coming to Mr. Keene’s pharmacy for years, and Greta used to glare at him from behind the counter while her dad wasn’t looking. “I’m getting my prescription refilled? For my inhaler?”

The smile dropped off of Greta’s face suddenly, replaced by a glare that was almost suspicious – like what Eddie had just said was not only weird, but unthinkable. Like he had said something _wrong_ somehow. It set him on edge, though he couldn’t exactly place why.

“He’s still –,” she started, and then stopped herself with a shake of her head, “You’re still using the inhaler?”

“Well,” Eddie glanced over to the pharmacist’s counter to see that the other customer was gone; if he wanted to, he could cut this conversation short, get his medication, and be on his way, “I still have asthma, so. Yes?”

Greta shook her head again, a pinched expression on her face. For a moment her eyes seemed distant, focused on somebody other than Eddie even as she looked right at him – he strongly considered simply grabbing his prescription and leaving without another word to Greta, but then she heaved a massive sigh and said, “Come outside with me for a minute.”

It was such a bizarre request, Eddie had no choice but to acquiesce. Greta seemed uneasy, glancing over her shoulder repeatedly as they both walked through the pharmacy’s aisles towards the front door. Every time she did so, the ball of dread Eddie could feel forming in his chest grew. Her nervousness didn’t seem to fade until they were outside on the sidewalk, beneath the cloudy September sky. As the pharmacy door slid shut behind them with a gentle thud, Greta exhaled with a huff – the tension in her face had changed from anxious to annoyed.

“You’re, what, twenty years old now?” she asked, voice so harsh Eddie knew it had to be a rhetorical question. Still, he felt the need to reply.

“I’ll be twenty in November,” he said. Something about his answer made her angrier. She rolled her eyes and shook her head again and muttered something under her breath. The dread in Eddie’s chest was so overgrown he could feel it in his throat.

“I can’t believe my dad hasn’t told you this by now,” said Greta, hands clenched into fists and perched on her hips, “I knew your mom wouldn’t ever – but my dad? Jesus, man. Almost twenty fucking years.”

Her eyes were unfocused again, looking past Eddie at something he couldn’t see. He wanted to turn around, wanted to walk back into the pharmacy and get his medicine. He wanted to turn around and find his car and drive back home. He wanted Greta to leave him alone, stop talking, let him get on with his routine – but more than that he wanted to know what the _Hell_ was going on. He couldn’t leave now.

“What are you talking about?” he said, not caring that it came out sounding shaky and afraid, not caring about anything but her answer.

“Your medication,” snapped Greta, “They’re all placebos.”

Eddie expected to feel something – something like fear or anger or shock – but he didn’t. He didn’t feel anything, not even the dread that had been so all-consuming just a moment before. It was like someone had put a thick sheet of glass between him and what was happening, so it was happening to someone else instead.

He didn’t mean to speak, couldn’t feel the words leaving his mouth, but he could hear his own voice asking, “What do you mean?”

“Oh, come _on,_ ” she practically groaned. She was fidgeting non-stop, arms going from her hips to crossed in front of her to pushed into the pockets of her autumn coat. If Eddie had had more presence of mind in that moment, he would have realized she was uncomfortable, not angry like she was clearly pretending to be, “You are absolutely old enough to know what ‘placebo’ m– I mean they’re fake. Bullshit.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No, it’s true,” she said, “Think about it – you were always a smart kid, just _think_ , Eddie.”

So Eddie thought about it. He thought about the frequent doctor’s appointments, and then he thought about how often his mom insisted they change doctors because the previous one wasn’t _good enough._ He thought about the collection of pills sitting in his bathroom medical cabinet, and then he thought about how he wouldn’t be able to list what all of them were for if someone asked. He thought about his mother explaining his symptoms to people before he had a chance to do so himself. He thought about all the times he had to sit outside the principal’s office while his mother argued with a gym teacher, or a guidance counselor, or a school nurse.

"How can you be sure?" he forced himself to ask eventually. He already knew the answer; he really, really wished he didn't, but he did. His throat felt sore and raw, and his hands were shaking, hanging limply at his sides, but he couldn't tell if he was crying or not.

"How can I be sure?" she sounded incredulous. Eddie couldn't blame her. He knew the answer, he didn't need to ask, and yet – "Because my dad's been the one selling your mother, and _you_ , those fake drugs for – for years now. How could I not know?"

“Then why didn’t you –,” Eddie stopped himself when his voice broke, swallowed roughly, and tried again, “Why are you telling me all this now?”

Eddie could see the muscles working in Greta’s jaw and the tension set in her shoulders; he watched her arms fold and unfold and fold again and realized she was – in this moment, at least – just as miserable as he was. “Even if we didn’t always… like each other in high school,” she said eventually, and somehow Eddie knew that was the closest thing to an apology he was ever going to get from her; in that moment, he couldn’t care less, “You still deserve… better. You deserve to know.”

After that, neither of them spoke for a long, long time. If Greta was disappointed or annoyed by Eddie’s lack of reply, she didn’t show it: she just stood and stared at him, expression not quite patient but _blank,_ as he stared right back. Eddie couldn’t be sure how long they stayed like that, making silent eye contact while the people of Derry meandered past them on the sidewalk, but eventually he shook his head to clear his thoughts. When he scrubbed one hand across his face, he realized – in a detached kind of afterthought – that he _had_ been crying, the skin beneath his eyes was tacky and sore to the touch.

With a deep breath in, another shake of the head, and then a deep breath out, Eddie had managed to smile wanly at Greta and say, “Well. It – it was nice catching up with you.” Then he turned back towards the pharmacy and swung the front door open.

“Wait,” said Greta, clearly confused, “What’re you doing?”

“Getting my prescription,” Eddie answered, and then – before she had an opportunity to stop him again – he walked through the pharmacy door and did just that.

For the next six days, Eddie went about his usual routine as if nothing had changed at all. Not because he was trying to ignore what Greta had told him – the memory was always there, a storm cloud overhead – but because it hadn’t quite hit him yet. Eddie had always assumed denial was an active process, something you _chose_ to live in, but those six days proved that clearly wasn’t true.

On the seventh day, he called in sick to work, took his car, and drove two towns over to a walk-in clinic, all without telling his mother. Paranoia prevented him from trusting a doctor anywhere in or even _around_ Derry. It felt like there wasn’t a single doctor in their entire town that Eddie hadn’t gone to at some point in his life, and the thought made him feel sick. What if they remembered Eddie? What if they remembered his _mom,_ and told her about him visiting?

The clinic’s waiting room was ninety percent windows, bathing the entire room in bright, natural light. The carpeting was moss green, and the chairs were made of metal and padded with deflated foam cushions. When Eddie spoke to the receptionist – a sleepy, blond-haired man whose name tag read _BRUCE_ – he was given a form to fill out that asked for his name, his age, his height and weight. When he reached the portion of the form that asked what, exactly, he needed to see a doctor for, he had to stop.

The list of possible symptoms was huge – stomachache, nausea, dizziness, loss of vision, loss of hearing, headaches, ear pain, back pain chest pain trouble breathing – and familiar to him. He had sat next to his mother, in waiting rooms just like this one, a thousand times. He’d watch her tick off half a dozen boxes while he wheezed and fidgeted and tried to keep himself calm in the seat next to her. _Why aren’t waiting room chairs ever comfortable?_ he thought to himself, both as a child with his mother and as an adult all on his own.

As he checked off the box that read _Other symptom(s)_ , he realized he probably should have called ahead – there was no way a walk-in clinic would be able to help him right away. They might not be able to help at all. This entire endeavor could be a massive waste of time, but Eddie couldn’t bring himself to leave.

Eventually the doctor came out and called Eddie’s name, gesturing for him to follow her. They left the sunlit waiting room for a grey-walled hallway with no windows. When they reached the exam room – the number on the door labeled it _R. 112_ – the doctor gestured towards the table without glancing up from the paper she was reading over. Purely out of habit and routine, Eddie took a seat even though he knew he didn’t really need to, clutching at the strap of the bag slung over his shoulder.

“So,” the doctor said. Eddie peered at her coat to try to find a name tag, but there wasn’t one as far as he could tell, and she didn’t introduce herself, “You filled out… only ‘other symptoms,’ I see. Is there something specific you’ve been dealing with lately that you came in for?”

“Yeah. Uh. Yeah,” Eddie stammered after a moment of silence; he was still trying to find a name tag, “Actually, it’s not – I don’t think I’m actually sick?”

There was a short, tense pause, and then the clipboard was clattering to the counter as the doctor set it down. “What –,” she started, and then seemed to catch herself before the words came out too harsh, “Could you elaborate on that?”

“I mean, I take all these medications for all these sicknesses I have – or people have told me I have, but,” said Eddie, all of his words coming out in a rush, “I don’t think I have any of them.”

“…Any of the sicknesses,” the doctor echoed. Her expression bordered on disbelieving, eyes narrowed and stern.

Eddie could feel his breath getting thin; just one week earlier, he would have said he was having an asthma attack, but now he wasn’t so sure. He needed the doctor to believe him. He _needed_ her to understand. With shaking hands, Eddie reached into his bag and pulled out all of his medication alongside pharmacy receipts to prove they were all really his: his inhaler, four different pill bottles, and a tube of antihistamine cream.

“I used to take more when I was a kid,” Eddie said, laying the collection of pills and bottles and crumpled receipts out on his lap, “I don’t remember what they were, but I remember taking – more.”

Eyes now wide with shock, the doctor leaned forward and grabbed a bottle at random from Eddie’s lap. “Lamotrigine,” she read aloud. Her eyes flickered up to meet Eddie’s, her face pinched with a frown, “Is this for bipolar disorder?”

“I’ve never been taken to a psychiatrist,” he said, trying and failing to sound unbothered. From the tone of her voice, he could tell what she was trying to imply about him, and while in reality Eddie couldn’t be sure of anything regarding his health anymore – including whether or not he’d been taken to a psychiatrist without his knowledge at some point – he couldn’t let there be any room for argument.

“Then this must be for epilepsy,” the doctor said. Somewhere beneath his anger, Eddie was grateful that she was choosing to ignore the way his voice shook. “Do you have seizures?”

 _Did_ Eddie have seizures? He couldn’t recall, with any kind of clarity, a specific moment when he’d had one, or when he’d had to talk to a doctor about having one, or even when he’d started taking the medication. He _must_ have had one, though, at least _once_. He’d been prescribed something to treat them, after all, and he couldn’t remember ever feeling lied to, either. On the rare days when he’d forget to take his medication, he _would_ feel sick and shaky and like his body was not his own, and those feelings had always felt so real. Eddie knew how the placebo effect worked; maybe it could happen in reverse. Maybe you could make a person sick just by telling them they were, over and over again.

The thought made Eddie shift nervously where he sat, unable to look the doctor in the eye as he said, “My mom says I do.”

Instead of responding verbally, the doctor shook her head – the skeptical look on her face had shifted into something decidedly more unnerved – and reached one hand out, a silent request. With an audible swallow, Eddie handed his inhaler over, and she immediately began to read the prescription label.

“This is also a generic,” she said, “Salbutamol… are all your medications generic?”

“Yeah,” Eddie glanced down at the collection of medication in his lap and nodded, “As far as I know, they all are.”

The doctor paused and then heaved a sigh as she placed Eddie’s inhaler, as well as his lamotrigine, on top of the clipboard on the counter. When she turned back to him, her face was grim. For a second, Eddie could feel his heart begin to sink with dread, until she reached out a hand for the rest of his medication and said, “I’m going to need to have these tested.”

Eddie blinked at her – once, twice – and then rushed into action, clumsily gathering the pill bottles up and trying to hand them to her all at once. Later he would be embarrassed about how high strung he’d been, but in the moment the only thing that mattered was the fact that she seemed willing to believe him.

“Yeah, o-of course, yeah,” he stammered frantically, “How long will it take for you to know if they–, what the test results are?”

“None of these are particularly _complex_ or rare drugs, so probably not too long,” she said as she squinted down at one bottle’s label in particular, a pinched expression on her face, “The phone number you provided on your intake form is yours, correct? Not an emergency contact’s?”

“No,” said Eddie, “I mean, yeah, it’s mine.”

“Good,” she placed everything down onto the counter, picked up her clipboard, and turned back to face Eddie, “I’ll have a nurse call you in about four to seven days, and maybe you can come back in and we can… talk about this more.”

With that, there was nothing else for Eddie to do but thank the doctor and leave. The next handful of days passed in a haze, somehow feeling like every other day before despite the way Eddie’s heart would stop any time his cellphone rang. For the time being Eddie was determined to act as if everything was still normal, because if the pills turned out to be real, nothing would have to change. His life would go back to how it was before that awful conversation with Greta, who he could forever think of as his high school bully who pulled a mean-spirited prank on him as an adult, told him a stupid lie to make him panic.

If Greta hadn’t been lying, though, and all his medications were what she said – fake, placebos, _bullshit_ – Eddie didn’t know what he would do. He didn’t know if things would change irreparably, or just change a little bit, or stay completely the same, and it was this uncertainty that made Eddie feel so on edge, like there was a noose around his neck, just barely loose enough for him to keep breathing.

On the fifth day (or maybe the sixth; honestly, it had started getting hard to keep track of the time passing) Eddie answered the phone to someone saying, “Is this Edward Kaspbrak speaking?”

“Uh, yeah,” Eddie’s mind stalled as he tried to recognize the voice, but any possible name escaped him, “Yeah. This is Eddie.”

“Great,” the voice said, “This is the Chamberlain Public Clinic’s midtown office, calling to follow up about an appointment you had with Dr. Tatham regarding your medication?”

“Oh,” said Eddie, hit with two simultaneous realizations: he hadn’t known the doctor’s name until now, and the only reasonable explanation for why he’d need to come in again was if the medications really were placebos, “Well, I don’t have tomorrow off, but after that – would Thursday work?”

“Absolutely,” the voice replied. _They must be a nurse, or a receptionist,_ Eddie thought to himself, “We have hours from nine to six-thirty, so just come in any time on Thursday, I’ll let Dr. Tatham know to expect you.”

The next two days passed not in a blur, hard to grasp or hazy, but almost too-sharply in focus. Work on Wednesday was an exhausting affair, where it would usually be just another part of his comfortable routine. Eddie could hardly sleep, preoccupied and overstimulated; by the time Thursday did roll around, he could feel the dark bags under his eyes, the trembling in his every movement. The receptionist at the clinic attempted to hand him some more intake forms to fill out, but then he explained who he was and who he was here to see, and their face lit up with recognition.

“Dr. Tatham told me to tell her when you arrived,” they said, snatching up an old-fashioned looking phone from the desk, “Please feel free to sit as you wait. She’ll be out in just one second.”

Eddie was alone in the waiting room as he sat, one leg bouncing anxiously and his back pressing into the cheap metal of his seat, which didn’t surprise him. It was just a little bit after one in the afternoon on a random weekday in November; most people were at work, or at school, or – if they were his age – some combination of both, attending college somewhere far away from Derry. The thought was enough to make Eddie feel a little bit ridiculous. His entire life revolved around illness, and this was just more proof of that – doctor visits like this were an inevitability for him. A cornerstone. _Any second now,_ Eddie thought to himself, _Dr. Tatham is going to come in here and tell me all of my medications are real, and I really am sick, and this is going to be just another example of me being too anxious for my own good._

When Dr. Tatham appeared, however, her face was so dread-stricken Eddie knew right away what she was really going to say. He knew it with such certainty that, when the door to her office clicked shut behind them, he said without bothering to take a seat, “They _were_ fake, weren’t they?”

Dr Tatham turned to face him, mouth already open as if to speak, though she shut it quickly and without any words. Instead of speaking, she slid a drawer open and withdrew a small bundle of paper held inside a manilla folder. She looked from the folder to Eddie to the folder again, teeth dug into her lower lip, clearly trying to find a polite way to break the news. The attempt at tact only filled Eddie with annoyance – if what Greta had told him really was true, he’d been treated with kid gloves for far too long already. He didn’t want any more coddling.

“Yes. They were,” she said, and even though Eddie knew it was coming, the words still made something inside of him deflate, made the blood in his veins run cold, “Whoever’s been filling these prescriptions for you, they – you could press some serious charges here, Mr. Kaspbrak.”

“Right,” Eddie croaked, then shook his head frustratedly, “I mean no, I mean – none of them were real?”

“No. At least, none of them were what they claimed to be,” if Dr. Tatham was annoyed by Eddie’s dismissal of her legal advice, she didn’t show it. “The lamotrigine you’ve been taking would work as a mild muscle relaxant. Your prednisone is basically just ibuprofen, and the cream you brought in – it _is_ an antihistamine, sure, but it’s an over-the-counter one. It’s certainly not prescription strength.”

“And the inhaler?”

“Practically tap water,” said Dr. Tatham; Eddie buried his face in his hands, fingers pressing so hard into his eyelids he saw red and cyan blue sparks, “Had a little camphor added in for flavoring, if you would believe it, but – are you alright?”

He cracked his fingers enough to peer at her, and from the expression on her face he could tell _she_ could tell that was a stupid question. He decided to take pity on her, keeping his voice as neutral as he could as he replied, “Sorry, but no. I’m not.”

“I feel I should reiterate,” she said, moving past her faux-pas quickly, “Whoever filled these prescriptions – maybe even the doctor who prescribed them – I mean, this is one of the most egregious cases of malpractice I’ve seen. You’d have a strong as Hell case.”

“Thank you, but that’s not what… I’m not going to do that, I don’t think,” Eddie said. Dr. Tatham’s lips pursed as she looked at him, but she didn’t say anything more at first. She seemed disappointed, but not annoyed, by his reluctance.

“Then what would you like to do next?” she said, instead of chastising him, and for a moment he genuinely didn’t know. For a moment, Eddie considered his options and found that he didn’t understand any of them, outside of maybe dropping dead, or staying here in Chamberlain for the rest of his life to avoid ever seeing his mother again, but the moment passed as Eddie realized with sudden clarity exactly what he wanted to do.

He thanked Dr. Tatham, said goodbye to both her and her receptionist, drove back to Derry, and made a beeline for his bedroom as soon as he got through the door of his house. He knelt to the floor and reached beneath his bed to pull out his backpack, the one he’d used all throughout high school. It smelt vaguely of mothballs and old paper, but was otherwise in no worse state than it had been when he’d last used it, two years prior. He unzipped the bag with fervor he felt the threadbare fabric rip, but he didn’t care. He was too busy trying to find what he’d come into his room to get – the handful of pamphlets from the college counselor’s office that he’d never gotten to show his mother, still tucked away in his backpack after all these years. Despite giving up on going to university long ago, Eddie could never bring himself to throw the pamphlets out, and for that he was now grateful.

Over the course of the next few weeks, slowly but surely, he filled out college applications to three different schools on the East coast. He drove himself back to his old high school to ask his favorite teachers for transcripts and recommendation letters, and then he asked his boss at the pet shop for a letter as well. He spoke to the head of the Derry Public Library and read every WikiHow article he could find on how to fill out college applications without a parent knowing – if his mother found out, after all, he knew that she would try to stop him.

In the end, Eddie was surprised by how easy everything turned out to be. Writing an essay was just a matter of remembering how to do so, getting letters of recommendation a matter of simply asking, and keeping all of this hidden from his mother felt like a breeze. For all of her paranoia and fear surrounding school, doctors, strangers, any and all of Eddie’s friends, she’d never been inclined to doubt Eddie himself. He knew how to sneak around her, how to answer any question and give the right excuse; he’d been doing it for years, after all.

When he reached the financial aid portion of the application process, however, Eddie realized there was no way he could keep the charade going. Not only was he going to have to _tell_ her he’d been applying to colleges, he was going to have to ask her permission to continue doing so. And while the idea of telling her made Eddie’s heart sink, for some reason, one he couldn’t quite figure out, it wasn’t nearly as terrifying as it had been back in high school.

Unlike last time, Eddie didn’t prepare for the conversation at all – it happened seemingly on a whim. It was one of the Sundays Eddie had off from work, so he was already preparing dinner when his mother got home from her own job. It was only five in the afternoon, but it was late enough into November that the sky was already bruise-black through the frosted kitchen windows.

“Hey, mom,” he called out into the hallway as he heard the front door shut, “How was work?”

“Oh, it was fine, Eddie-bear,” she sighed as she came into the kitchen. She had a few paper bags bundled up in her arms; _she must have stopped at the market on her way home,_ Eddie thought to himself, somewhat distantly, “What about you? It’s not too boring being here on your own all day, is it?”

“No, don’t worry,” he said, turning back to the stove and the pot of broccoli-cheddar soup he was preparing, “I find ways to keep myself busy.”

From behind him, there was shuffling and a series of arhythmic _thumps_ , the telltale sound of his mother unloading the groceries onto the dining room table before sorting them into the right cupboard and drawers. Above the gentle din, Eddie heard her say, “Well, that’s great! How do you go about doing that?”

Without thinking, Eddie replied, “I’ve been trying to workshop one of my college essays.”

The familiar sounds of his mother’s movements stopped all at once. It was like a spell had been cast, a supernatural hush falling over the kitchen that was interrupted only by the quiet bubbling of the soup on the stovetop. Eddie didn’t dare turn around to face his mother, didn’t even dare to breathe; he just stood and waited for her to say something. _Anything._

“You want to go to _college_ ,” she said – not a question, but a blank admission. Eddie found himself grateful that she was acknowledging what he’d said instead of playing dumb, a favorite tactic of hers during an argument.

“Yeah,” said Eddie, and like that the spell was broken and he could breathe again. There was the loud, clattering sound of a cupboard flinging open – he had clearly upset his mother, and she wanted him to _know_ it – but he willed himself not to flinch.

“I thought we talked about this,” came his mother’s reply, a moment or two later. Eddie rolled his eyes purely because he knew there was no chance that she would catch him doing so.

“Two years ago, we did, yeah,” he said as he added another pinch of paprika to the soup. Despite the racing of his heart, the rush of blood he could hear in both his ears, he tried to stay in control of himself. He couldn’t let her get the best of him again, so he forced his voice to sound light-hearted and even as he continued, “But I still really want to go, and now… I mean, better late than never, right?”

“You’re going to drop out,” she said, without any of her previous hesitation, and the venom in her voice surprised Eddie – but not as much as it should have.

“I’ve held down a job for years now, haven’t I?” Eddie shot back, finally turning around to face his mother to find her was glaring at him from across the dining room table. Her face was red and tear-stained, the groceries a sprawling mess around her; she’d clearly given up on putting them away at some point in this argument. “And if I _do_ drop out – well, it’s the money, right, it’s the money you care about –,”

“ _Don’t_ speak to me like that,” she said, a furious attempt to cut him off, but Eddie plowed on.

“Well, I have savings now, so – if I really waste your money, I can jus– I can pay you back,” he said, so hurriedly his words tripped over each other and became nearly unintelligible; he couldn’t bring himself to care, “I can come, come back to Derry, and I can get a job again, and then I can – I’ll be in debt. To you,” he paused to inhale, and for once, his mother didn’t interrupt, “I mean, that’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Still, she remained quiet; she seemed too stunned to speak, and beneath his anger and anxiety, beneath even the guilt for making his mother cry, Eddie felt the tiniest shred of pride.

“You’re really serious about this?” her voice wobbled when she finally did speak, eyes glassy but shoulders set with anger, “You’re just going to abandon me here?”

“Yeah, I am serious,” Eddie said; his mother’s face crumbled. He tried to cling to that proud feeling, however small, as he continued, “In fact, I’m almost done with the application process. I just need your help with the financial aid information.”

“Well, you can forget it,” she snapped. It wasn’t surprising, not in the slightest, but Eddie still felt her rejection as a physical pain in his chest.

“Mom, please –,”

“No! Absolutely not!” she said with a violent shake of her head. There were a few tears slipping down her cheeks now, to Eddie’s horror, “I’m not going to help you – help you _leave_ , and make the biggest mistake of your life, all because, what? You resent me now? You want to get back at me? For _what?_ ”

Eddie opened his mouth to argue, to say he wasn’t trying to _abandon her_ , or get some kind of revenge, but what he ended up saying instead was, “I know all of my medication is fake.”

Just like that, his mother fell silent, and just like that, Eddie realized why he wasn’t afraid of her anymore. Now that he knew the truth – that she had been lying to him for years, for his entire life, even – he also knew there was nothing worse she could do to him. She could refuse to help him, stop him from going to college, even forbid him from ever seeing Dr. Tatham again, and none of it would matter. Eddie had nothing left to lose.

“Who told you that?” his mother said, breaking Eddie out of his own reverie. “Th-they’re lying to you, Eddie-bear, you must know that.”

“A doctor told me, actually.”

“Dr. Lebrun told you that? I knew I shouldn’t’ve trusted –,” she blinked, and a few more tears slipped down her cheeks; Eddie forced himself to look away from her, turning back to the stovetop, “Sweetie, he was lying to you –,”

“No, Mom, not Dr. Lebrun. I saw a doctor over in Chamberlain,” he said, “She had the medication tested. They’re all fake. They’re placebos.”

“You can’t – Eddie,” she tried to say, but her voice was partially swallowed by a sob, “You can’t possibly believe that they’re, I mean, you’re not making any _sense–_ ,”

“I agree, it _doesn’t_ make any sense,” Eddie snapped as his patience finally, _finally_ wore out. In the small, quiet space of their kitchen, he sounded thunderous, almost hysterical, refusing to turn an inch to look at her as he spoke. “I don’t understand why anyone – let alone _you_ – would tell me to take medication I don’t need.”

He stopped to wait for a reply, but none came. Taking a deep breath to steady his nerves, Eddie flicked the stove off and turned back around to face his mother. Her face was sallow and pale and guttered by tear tracks, though she’d stopped crying; her eyes, wide and horrified, were suddenly dry. She was looking at Eddie the way she might look at a stranger or a ghost, as if he was unrecognizable to her – and maybe he was.

“But… I don’t think I really need to understand,” he spoke slowly to hide the trembling in his voice and crossed his arms to hide the shaking of his hands, “I could go to college, and keep taking my medicine, and we – we don’t have to talk about this ever again.”

“…You’ll keep taking the medicine,” she echoed, and Eddie felt that same, small thrill of pride again.

“That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Slowly, her face gained back its color, flushing red; her mouth set in a grim flat line. “You _need_ to take it.”

“I also need help filing for financial aid,” he said, hoping the implication was clear. If the look of growing anger on his mother’s face was any indication, it was, and for a long, long time, neither spoke. Eddie was just beginning to worry he’d pushed her too far, she was going to say no, _of course she was going to say no,_ but then she nodded her head wordlessly, and Eddie felt himself smile.

“I think this is for the best,” he said as he turned back towards the stovetop and away from his mother. He grabbed himself a bowl from the cupboard, ladled some of the soup into it, and then turned to leave the room. Over his shoulder and without pause, he called, “I’m going to eat this upstairs, if that’s alright with you.”

True to her word, Eddie’s mother helped him fill out the last pieces of his college applications. She dragged her feet when answering questions, and broke into fits of tears out of nowhere, and tutted disapprovingly any time she knew he could hear her, but she never tried to deter him. In the winter, Eddie sent his applications out, and come spring, he got back an acceptance letter back from two of the three schools he applied to. Over the summer, he prepared himself to leave Derry for the first time in his life.

Otherwise, however, Eddie’s routine had barely changed at all, the months passing the same as they always had – he went to work, came home, cooked dinner for his mother, and took his medication. When fall rolled back around, he and his mother made the seven hour drive down to New York City for his first semester of college. _This is for the best,_ he’d told his mother that day, almost a year ago; as he piled his tap-water inhaler and his bottles of sugar-pills into his backpack, he tried to make himself believe it.

\--

Some days were better than others. Some days Eddie would roll out of bed only a moment or two after his alarm went off. He would manage to make himself a _real_ breakfast for once, a meal of cold cereal and warm matcha tea, and he would remember to rinse the dishes out when he left them in the sink. The part of him that was always anxious, shrieking and small and violent in the center of his ribcage, would be quieter. Not so quiet that he could ignore it, but he could _deal_ with it. He could get himself moving, and he could keep himself moving, and at the end of the day he could maybe, just maybe, feel proud of himself for doing so.

Some days were better than others – some days were almost _good_ , and on those days Eddie would let himself feel a small flicker of hope. He would think to himself that things were finally looking up, that he was finally getting the _fuck_ over it.

October 11th was not one of those days.

On October 11th, Eddie woke up an hour and a half before his alarm, sweaty and nauseous from an already-half-forgotten nightmare, but still managed to be eleven minutes late to his first class. His breakfast was a slice of cold pizza, grabbed from a takeout box in the fridge, and his two morning classes passed in a haze of exhaustion and hunger. Eddie couldn’t find any time to slow down or relax until half-past one in the afternoon, at which point he was thoroughly prepared to just give up on the day.

“I just shouldn’t go to third period, right,” Eddie said from where he was collapsed on the couch; Bill, who was listening from their kitchenette, looked over at him in bemusement, “Like, I should just skip, and stay here, and feel like shit, right?”

“When’s your third period, again?” Bill asked, even though Eddie _knew_ he knew the answer to that question; he felt his heart sink.

“It’s… it’s at seven,” he admitted. Bill, sympathetic as always, snorted out a laugh.

“You have a few hours, man,” he said as he slammed the microwave shut. Eddie hadn’t seen what he had in there, but he was fairly certain it was a pizza bagel, “Take a short nap, eat a nice lunch, and see how you feel. But if you want muh-my… my opinion,” he punched a series of numbers into the microwave as he spoke, “You should go.”

Eddie decided to follow his advice, albeit poorly. Instead of a nice lunch, he ate a bowl of dry cereal. Instead of a short nap, he passed out in his room for the rest of the afternoon, only to wake up in the evening and realize he had fifteen minutes to get to his night class. Fortunately, the class was close enough to his and Bill’s dorm that – with the help of his bicycle – Eddie was able to make it on time. Unfortunately, neither his nap nor his measly lunchtime meal had improved Eddie’s mood _at all_. If anything, he felt even worse than before, the next three hours going by at a glacial pace as Eddie sat twitchily in the very back row. Despite being hunkered down in the corner of the classroom, the lower-half of his face buried in the oversized material of his sweatshirt, Eddie could feel everyone’s eyes on him, and it made his stomach churn. Every few seconds, he checked his phone to see the time, leg bouncing underneath his desk; in the end, he left class six full minutes before it was officially let out, too antsy to stay another second. He kept his face down as he sidled his way through the rows of seats, his bag clutched tight in one hand.

It was nearly 10:00pm, so the sky had long gone dark and starless. It was the kind of autumn evening that felt temperate and calm until the wind, trapped between the buildings on either side of the street, roared to life and lowered the temperature by ten whole degrees. Instinctively, Eddie hunched his shoulders up to guard his ears, his hands too preoccupied with his bike lock to pull his hood up over his head. All he wanted was to be back in his room, back in his _bed_ , this horrible day finally finished.

Biking through the city streets usually wasn’t a harrowing endeavor for Eddie – the streetlamps overhead kept most of the street illuminated, and Eddie had long since grown used to navigating his way through and around even the worst New York traffic. Even on the stretches of road where the streetlights had gone out, there was a permanent fluorescent glow emanating from the windows of any nearby apartment building, hotel, or 24/7 bodega, which allowed Eddie to see where he was going; the only part of the city where this was not the case was the small portion of road leading into Eddie’s dormitory parking lot. Behind the block of dormitory buildings, the university had constructed a park to serve as a common space and quad for the use of the students. Because the quad itself was so well-lit, and the street outside of the dormitory block was meant to be maintained by the city, the parking lot connecting the two was often neglected. The asphalt was littered with potholes and the lights, if they burnt out during the colder seasons, could go months without being replaced.

On any other day, this wouldn’t have been a problem – Eddie would have walked his bike into the parking lot, to the bike rack at the back-entrance of his building, instead of trying to ride it through the dark and over the uneven concrete. But October 11th was _not_ any other day, and Eddie was too desperate for it to be _over with_ to do the smart thing; the thought to step off his bike and walk the rest of the way up to his dorm didn’t even occur to him until it was too late.

Without warning, Eddie’s bike veered violently to one side as its front tire ran into and then bounced out of a massive pothole. The bike shuddered and wobbled, but for a brief moment, Eddie thought he could wrangle it back under control – in his panic, he yanked the handlebars back and to the right. It was too dark to see what he ended up running into, but he definitely ran into _something,_ as his bike jolted to a sudden and complete stop. The impact sent Eddie flying, the sound of his bike rattling to the ground somewhere behind him, but before he could even process that information the pitch-black asphalt rose up to meet him arms-over-face first.

The pain was instantaneous. Eddie must have screamed, because how could he _not_ scream, but he wasn’t able to feel or even hear it through the white-hot agony shooting up his forearm. He’d broken his arm once before, when he was thirteen and one of his middle-school bullies had taken things more than a little bit too far, so he knew _this_ was what it felt like. On instinct, he rolled himself over onto his back; once he was no longer face down in the pavement, it became easier to breath, visible puffs of steam rising from his mouth. A gust of cold wind made his tears sting his cheeks.

Eddie’s first real, coherent thought, as he lay there clutching his definitely-broken arm, was _This is what I get for listening to Bill._ His second thought – which came almost a full thirty seconds after the first, his mind too preoccupied by burning pain to come up with anything intelligible – was _I need to call Bill._

Another thirty or so seconds passed before Eddie was able to put that thought to use, writhing on the asphalt until he could conjure up the strength to pull his cellphone from his sweatshirt pocket. He fumbled through his contacts list to find Bill’s number, and, despite the trembling of his fingers, he managed to press the call button on just the second try.

Halfway through the third ring, Bill answered the phone with a genial, “Hey, man, what’s up?”

“You need to come get me from the parking lot,” Eddie ground out, and at the sound of his strained voice Bill’s demeanor changed instantly. Through the phone speaker, Eddie heard Bill curse, followed by the telltale shuffling of him standing and rooting around their dorm, no doubt for shoes.

“Wuh-why?” Bill said; if Eddie wasn’t in so much pain, he would have felt guilty for making Bill panic, but as it was, he couldn’t bring himself to care, “What the fuck h-happened, Eddie?”

“I think my arm is broken,” said Eddie, and then, after a beat of trying and failing to even out his breathing, he amended, “I-I don’t know why I said that, it’s _definitely_ fucking broken.”

“Jesus Christ,” over the phone, Eddie heard something slam shut – maybe a door, maybe a drawer, “I’m gonna need my car keys. Where are, are you?”

“I’m on the ground.”

“I _f-f-figured,_ ” Bill snapped, and then there was another, louder slam – _definitely_ the door, “Care to be more specific?”

“It’s so dark out here, dude, I can’t see shit,” Eddie shot back, feeling somehow more at ease now that he and Bill were bickering, “I’m, I’m by the parking lot entrance, I guess.”

“Alright,” Bill was starting to sound a little breathless himself. If Eddie closed his eyes and tried to focus, he could picture him jogging through the dormitory halls to the elevator, “I’ll be there in – in like, a m-muh-minute tops, I promise.”

“Thanks,” Eddie said before he let his hand and his phone drop away from his face, not bothering to hang up first.

Eddie spent the next minute or two – which felt like an eternity – trying desperately not to vomit from pain and anxiety. He knew the next step was to go to the hospital, but there was nothing Eddie wanted to do less. Aside from the fact that just _being_ near doctors terrified Eddie, he didn’t want to deal with the minefield of questions they always asked – what was his medical history like, did he have any pre-existing conditions they should know about, was he on any medication – because the honest answer – the one he could never give – was _I don’t know._ He didn’t want to see the white walls of the hospital, or feel the starchy hospital bed sheets, because he knew they would just serve as reminders for things he’d give anything to forget.

He knew it was an inevitability, though: even _if_ a broken arm was something Eddie could treat at home, there was no way he could dissuade Bill from taking him to the emergency room.

“Eddie?” Bill’s voice called out from the darkness, interrupting Eddie’s train of thought. _Speak of the devil,_ he thought to himself. “Eddie!”

“Over here!” he yelled back. With his one good arm, Eddie tried to lift himself into a sitting position. He’d just about managed to prop himself up on one elbow and Bill came jogging into view, illuminated by the pale and distant glow of the city outside the parking lot. If the stricken look on Bill’s face was anything to go by, then the break in Eddie’s arm wasn’t just noticeable but _ugly_. “You’re gonna need to help me up.”

“Right,” said Bill with a quick, tense shake of his head. He lowered a hand down for Eddie to take; with only a slight grunt of pain on Eddie’s part, he was hefted to his feet. Bill jerked a hand over his shoulder, concerned eyes still locked on Eddie’s face. “C’mon, I’m parked over this way.”

As they walked through the parking lot to Bill’s car, Eddie braced himself for questions that never came; Bill didn’t speak at all, too preoccupied with shooting worried glances over his shoulder at Eddie every few seconds, as if it were his leg that was broken instead of his arm. It was only once they were in the car and pulling out of the parking lot that Bill finally said, “So wh-what happened?”

“I hit a pothole and fell off of my –,” Eddie jerked forward in the passenger seat, but the seatbelt pulling against the shoulder of his injured arm stopped him from twisting around to look back at the parking lot through the car window, “Goddamn it, _my bike._ ”

“Do you want me to turn around for it?” Bill asked and, despite the incredulous look upon his face, Eddie knew he _would_ if he asked him to.

“No,” Eddie huffed, collapsing back into the cheap cloth seat. Beneath the steady waves of adrenaline keeping his body and his mind keyed up, Eddie felt a pang of exhaustion, “Don’t bother. I don’t give a shit.”

“Right,” Bill said, and then the car fell silent. Eddie shifted in an attempt to get comfortable, but the pain radiating from his left forearm made that nearly impossible. _At least I’m right-handed,_ he thought to himself as his eyes slip shut. It was getting easy to think and to focus as the initial panic started to fade, until Bill broke the silence and asked, “Why didn’t you call an ambulance?”

Eddie’s eyes snapped back open and flickered over to Bill, who was glancing between the road and Eddie expectantly. It was no secret that Eddie didn’t particularly _like_ doctors, but he knew Bill thought that was the extent of it – a general dislike, an unease that most people held for hospital visits. Certainly not a strong enough dislike to explain forgoing an ambulance after breaking an arm in the middle of the night.

“I don’t feel like paying for one,” he said, and Bill seemed happy to leave it at that. Neither of them spoke again for the rest of the fifteen minute car ride, though Eddie sort of wished Bill would – the reminder of where they were going had set him back on edge. With every minute that passed, the nauseating sense of anxiety grew, making it impossible for him to relax. The tension made the pain worse, until he couldn’t figure out which was worse – the ball of stress pressing on his chest or the stabbing agony in his arm.

By the time they had reached the hospital, Eddie’s thoughts were nearly incoherent, an endless loop of _I don’t want to be here. I really, really don’t want to be here._ He was about to say as such to Bill, despite knowing it wouldn’t change anything to do so, he still _had_ to be here, but then Bill was swinging the passenger side door open and offering to help Eddie with the seatbelt buckle.

The only thing Eddie could do as they made their way through the parking lot was focus on controlling his breathing. The doors of the emergency room were massive and made of glass, so the fluorescent lighting of the hospital’s interior cast a sickly glow over the concrete exterior. When they got close enough, the doors swept open automatically, and the antiseptic smell struck Eddie like a freight chain, his breath stuttering to a stop in his throat.

Bill was saying something to him, something about checking them in at the front desk, and then his hand was slowly leaving the small of Eddie's back. He wanted to reply to Bill somehow – wanted to thank him or ask him to repeat himself or apologize for this whole mess – but he couldn't find the words. His head felt full of static, his whole body tense with adrenaline. He could hardly even _focus_ on the anxiety, though, not when his whole arm was engulfed in a searing pain; he was about to try to follow Bill over to the receptionist when a voice cut through the haze of pain and panic:

“Holy shit – _Eddie?!_ ” the voice said, which was impossible, because Eddie knew that voice, could never forget that voice, no matter how many years had gone by, he could never – “Is that Eddie _fucking_ Kaspbrak?”

He spun on his heel, broken arm still clutched miserably to his chest, just to make sure he wasn’t hearing things.

And he wasn’t. Standing there, beneath the fluorescent lighting of the E.R. waiting room, face lit up with a smile exactly like the one Eddie always remembered him having, was none other than Richie _fucking_ Tozier.

It was remarkable, really, how easy it was to recognize him. There were some parts of him that had changed, of course – his hair was longer and his glasses were a different shape (one that better suited his face) – but most of him was exactly the same. He was still gangly as Hell, more elbows-and-knees than anything else, and his sense of style was still atrocious (houndstooth-patterned pants with a Hawaiian shirt, Jesus _Christ_.) His eyes were still massive behind his coke-bottle lenses, making his whole face seem cartoonishly expressive. He was still _Richie_ , essentially, looking as loud and obnoxious and repulsive and _familiar_ as ever.

“Oh my God,” Richie said, which was exactly what Eddie had wanted to say, too. Richie wasn’t saying it with the same sense of awe Eddie was feeling, though – he was staring, pale and a little nauseous-looking, at the place where Eddie was cradling his arm.

His very obviously broken arm. _Shit,_ thought Eddie, in a state of near-hysterical calm, _I forgot about that._

“What are you doing here?” Eddie said in a desperate bid to distract both Richie and himself; Richie looked about three seconds from throwing up, and if he did that, Eddie would _absolutely_ follow. The pain of a broken bone was stomach-churning enough on its own.

“I – uh,” stuttered Richie, and then he let out a sharp, jittery laugh. He ran a hand through his hair once, and then twice, and then scrubbed at the back of his neck – Eddie recognized it as a nervous tick of his, “Well, I was at the bar with some friends and I ate something that I… had an allergic reaction. I was the designated driver, though, so I had to,” he stopped to laugh again, and it sounded a touch more sincere, “I had to drive myself over here.”

“You drove while _in_ anaphylactic shock?” Eddie said, before he could even realize that he’d somehow remembered what kind of reaction Richie would have despite not remembering what Richie was allergic _to._ “Wait, what did you even eat?”

“Some of those stupid bar peanuts,” answered Richie; without meaning to, Eddie wrinkled his nose and shook his head.

“No,” he said, “You’re not allergic to peanuts,”

 _That_ made Richie laugh, uproarious and sudden, his face lighting up with pure delight. “You’re right! I’m not – but they’re often packaged at the same places as tree nuts, and cross contamination is, like, a whole thing, so,” he made a grand and sweeping gesture to himself and then the emergency room around them, “Here I am.”

Eddie opened his mouth to reply – bickering with Richie was still as natural as breathing, it seemed – when Bill appeared by his side and said, “They said a nurse will be out with you in just a sec-c-cuh… second.” In the nearly painfully bright lights of the waiting room, Eddie could see Bill’s stress clear as day. He didn’t look exhausted, per se – by Eddie’s estimates, it couldn’t be later than 10:30pm – but his shoulders were tense, his eyes weary and red-rimmed.

A fresh pang of guilt hit Eddie right between the ribs. “Jesus, Bill, I’m sorry,” he said, plowing on before Bill could deny his apology entirely, “You – you should just, just head back to the dorm.”

“What are you talking about? It’s not that late,” said Bill.

“But you look like shit, man.”

“You look w-w-wuh-worse,” Bill huffed and fiddled with the hem of his jacket, “I’m not leaving you here, that’d be such a dick move. Besides, how are you gonna get home?”

Right. Shit. Eddie winced at his own forgetfulness, and was just about to suggest he could get an Uber or a taxi back when Richie cut in, “I don’t mind staying and driving ‘im home.” Both Eddie and Bill whipped around to face Richie, who was smiling unabashedly back at them. Eddie felt a wave of fondness for Richie so nostalgic and sudden, it almost – _almost_ – drowned out the guilt still clawing at his chest.

“Uh,” Bill said, summing up Eddie’s own feelings about Richie’s offer pretty eloquently, “S-sorry, have we… met? Before?”

“Nah,” Richie said with a laugh that, from anyone else, would have sounded obnoxious, but Eddie knew was Richie’s version of sheepish, “I’m – the name’s Richie,” he stuck one hand out for Bill to shake; he did so with only the slightest hesitation, “Eddie and I grew up in the same town. We were best friends like, all through high school.”

“I thought you were on the West Coast still,” Eddie said in a desperate bid to stop Richie from divulging any more information about their shared past. As he spoke, Richie’s eyes flickered over to meet his, head cocked to one side in a gesture so familiar it gave Eddie déjà vu. Richie’s mouth opened as if to speak, but before he could say… _whatever_ it was he planned on saying, a nurse was calling for Eddie to follow her. His quickly rising fear must have shown on his face, because next thing he knew, Bill had laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder.

“Don’t worry, we’ll figure things out,” Bill said, glancing at Richie out of the corner of his eyes with a look that was curious, but not unkind. Eddie forced himself to take a deep breath that failed to calm his nerves even a little bit.

“I’ll see y – Bill, I’ll see you later,” he said, stumbling as he realized he wasn’t sure _who_ was going to be here when he came back out, or even when he _would_ come back out. The thought made his heart skip a beat, but he willed himself not to show that terror on his face as he turned and followed the nurse behind the receptionist’s desk, deeper into the hallways of the hospital and further away from both Bill and Richie.

\--

It turned out Eddie’s arm had broken in just about two places – a minor spiral fracture in the ulna bone and a displaced wrist, the latter of which was the doctor’s main concern. He needed to have his wrist manipulated and reset, which meant he had to undergo local anesthesia, and due to the extent of the break, he was going to need a full plaster cast instead of a splint. The entire process took just under an hour, which Eddie spent staring resolutely at a spot on the spotless hospital wall and hoping his monosyllabic answers to all the doctor’s questions weren’t _too_ rude. By the time the cast was finished full drying, it was almost midnight; the very last dregs of adrenaline had left Eddie’s body long ago, leaving him groggy and unfocused. The thought of having to maintain a conversation was almost too much to bear, and as he stumbled back into the waiting room, he was fully prepared to tell Bill as such and have their car ride back to the dorm building pass in silence.

But Bill wasn’t in the waiting room – there was only Richie, slouched over in one of the chairs and scrolling lazily through his phone. When Eddie came to a stop a few feet in front of him, his head snapped up and he smiled brightly. His eyes were just as huge and expressive as Eddie remembered them being, and right now they were looking at Eddie with something akin to awe. It sort of made Eddie want to pass out, but he wasn’t in the mood to interrogate _why_ that might be.

“So, you’re driving me home, I take it?” he said in a voice that sounded far more annoyed than he felt. Richie’s smile grew impossibly wider.

“You got that right, Eds!” he said, and as he stood up Eddie was given a harsh reminder of just how _tall_ Richie had gotten, “Y’ready to go?”

“Jesus, I forgot how stupid your nicknames are,” Eddie scrubbed a hand over his face and sighed. Without waiting for Richie’s reply, or even if Richie was following him, Eddie started to head for the doors. They opened automatically once he was close enough, at which point Richie caught up with him, appearing by his side with a huff of laughter.

“How you wound me, Eddie, my love!” he said, one hand pressed to his chest and the other draped dramatically above his brow, as if he were fainting; Eddie barely managed to suppress a snort of laughter, “You forgot about li’l ol’ me? I thought I left a greater impression on you than that.”

“I didn’t forget about you,” Eddie was quick to say. Richie might have been joking around, but Eddie didn’t want to pretend, even for a second, that he’d forgotten Richie in his entirety, “My mind must have blocked out the memories to protect me.”

“I’ll just have to jog your memory, then,” Richie said with a grin. He paused to fish his car keys out of his coat pocket; when he clicked the button for the car alarm, a grungy-looking Toyota not even forty feet from the emergency room doors lit up. There was a beat of silence, and then Richie added, sounding uncharacteristically shy, “It’s good to see you again.”

“It’s good to see you, too,” Eddie said after his own moment of hesitation. It was the truth, of course – Eddie _did_ feel glad to see Richie again, but he also felt nervous and surprised and about fifty other contradictory things. Over the course of just a few hours, the routine he’d spent over two years crafting seemed at risk. Living in New York, for Eddie, mostly meant trying to pretend he’d never lived anywhere else, and Richie – well, Richie was the only good thing, the _best_ thing, from Derry. But he was still _from Derry_. Eddie wasn’t sure how he was going to manage the collision of his life in Derry and his life here. He wasn’t sure he _could_ manage it.

He wanted to try, though, so he didn’t voice any of these worries – instead, he waited until they were both situated in Richie’s car to ask the question that’d been on his mind for nearly an hour now.

“What’re you doing in New York?” he blurted out; Richie paused in reversing the car out of its parking spot to blink at him in confusion, “I mean – you, y’know, you were at school in California. I didn’t think you had any interest in coming back to the East Coast.”

“Oh,” Richie sounded surprised, as if he thought Eddie was asking him a different question entirely, “No, yeah, I mean – mostly I just didn’t want to come back to Maine, y’know?”

“God, do I,” Eddie said with a groan, making Richie laugh yet again. Eddie had forgotten how easy it was to make him do that.

“Exactly! So, yeah, but – I mean,” said Richie. He couldn’t seem to stop glancing over to Eddie, even as he pulled out of the parking lot and back into the New York streets, “Bev – one of my roommates, and the coolest person I’ve ever met – aside from you, of course – got a great internship offer over here, and I had nothing keeping in Cali other than her, really. So. Here I am!”

“Oh. Huh. That’s – that’s cool,” Eddie said, and then winced at how stilted he sounded. From the mild look of amusement on Richie’s face, he could sense Eddie’s embarrassment, but – thank _fuck_ – he didn’t say anything, “I’m glad – I already said it, but it’s nice seeing you again, so… I’m glad.”

“Right? It’s like we were fated to reunite.” Richie said, eliciting both an eyeroll and an unwitting laugh from Eddie. For a moment, silence fell over the car, but it wasn’t uncomfortable – at least, it wasn’t as uncomfortable as it should have been, given the two years spent apart. Eddie wondered if he should have expected Richie to be upset or bitter, somehow, for the way they’d lost touch two years ago, but sitting next to him now, it didn’t seem possible.

As they slowed to a stop at a red light, Richie turned to face Eddie fully; the smile on his face had turned a little bit nervous, but his voice was nothing but curious as he asked, “What about you?” When Eddie didn’t answer, responding only with a confused frown, Richie elaborated, “Why are _you_ in New York?”

“Oh,” Eddie said. He glanced back towards the road as the light turned green, and Richie’s car started moving again, “I’m a student here.”

Eddie could see Richie’s brow furrow at that, even with him facing the road and away from Eddie. After a beat, the confusion melted off his face and Richie snorted loudly. “Yeah, that _would_ explain why the address your buddy Bill gave me was a Pace dormitory.”

“Wait, you already knew –,” Eddie whipped around to stare at Richie, equal parts confused and – oddly enough – embarrassed. In hindsight, he should have realized Bill had told Richie their address before he’d left when Richie hadn’t asked Eddie himself for it, but the day had been too hectic, the hospital visit too nerve-wracking, for him to have any commonsense left. “Why’d you bother to ask?”

“Just to doublecheck!” Richie laughed, though it sounded nervous, his face slightly flushed, “I’ve met my fair share of dormitory squatters before, they’re lovely people.”

“Do I seem like someone who would squat on a college campus?”

“…No, you do not.” Richie conceded with half of a shrug, “I guess I was jus’ wondering because I know… well, last time we talked, you weren’t so keen on going to school.”

 _That_ gave Eddie pause. Richie was right, technically, but it was more complicated than that. Much, much more complicated, and Eddie was too tired to get into it right now – or possibly ever – so after a moment’s hesitation, he said quietly, “I changed my mind.”

But then Richie asked, “How did you get your mom to change hers?” and Eddie swore his heart stopped beating in his chest.

Richie didn’t know the medications had been fake. Richie didn’t know Eddie wasn’t sick _._ And even though this fact should have been obvious – _why would he_ , the rational part of Eddie’s mind was yelling, _you stopped talking to him when you found out_ – it still made Eddie’s blood run cold.

He’d never told Bill about any of _this_ for, well. Obvious reasons. The collection of medicine on Eddie’s desk had gone uncommented on for the entire time they’d known each other. The rules his mother had imposed on him as a child about sports, exercise, food, drugs, what time he should be asleep by or awake by – they all melted away as the months passed, without Bill ever seeming to notice Eddie’s anxiety about those things at all. By now Eddie seemed, more or less, like any other college student, albeit one with a mildly contentious relationship with his parents, and that was no doubt how Bill saw him, too.

But there was no possibility of such a façade with Richie – Richie, who _didn’t know_ , who still believed Eddie was riddled with a myriad of illnesses alongside an immune system so compromised it was a risk for him to do just about anything – even if Eddie really, really tried. The only option, as he saw it, was to tell Richie the truth in its entirety – something he’d never done before.

He opened his mouth to do so, but what came out was, “It was hard, but she came around to the idea eventually.”

“Oh – well. That’s great!” Richie said, though his words barely registered with Eddie. He was still reeling from how naturally the lie had come to him, but Richie was too focused on driving to notice, “Last time I saw you, Mrs. K still had a habit of quarantining you, so –,” he scrunched his face up in an expression halfway between a grin and grimace, as if he regretted bringing the subject up. “Eh, whatever, I’m just sayin’ – it’s great you managed to convince her.”

 _I had to blackmail her into it,_ Eddie tried to force himself to say, _I had to agree to take fake drugs for the rest of my life, or else she never would have let me leave._

“Yeah – I mean, it took awhile,” said Eddie instead, even as it made his stomach churn, “But I had a job by then, so like, she was clearly loosening up on her rules anyways.”

The car fell silent again, but Eddie couldn’t find any comfort in it now. He could tell from Richie’s face that he was fishing for something to say to clear the air, which had become tense with the reminder of Eddie’s mother, and he knew if there was ever a chance to correct himself, it was now. Before he could find the words, however, Richie’s face lit up with a grin Eddie knew far too well, even to this day.

“Well, I don’t need you to tell me that, Eduardo,” Richie said, shooting Eddie a look that he recognized as his _I’m going to cause problems on purpose_ look, “I still get up to Derry to see your mom all the time, I _know_ about how loose she is –,”

“Richie!” Eddie reached over the console to whap Richie on the shoulder; predictably, it made Richie lose what little composure he had, breaking into peals of laughter, “Richie, I swear to _God_.”

“Careful, dude, I’m driving,” Richie said, to which Eddie responded by smacking his arm again, only harder this time; Richie’s laughter was cut off by a yelp, but the smile remained steadfast on his face, “Stop hitting me! I’m gonna crash.”

“Good,” snapped Eddie, “Make sure to unbuckle first if you do, I want you to go through the windshield.”

The tension dissipated, whatever shame Richie had felt melting away, and Eddie knew that his opportunity had passed. For the rest of the car ride, even as their conversation resumed as normal, as comfortable with each other as they had been two years ago, there was a weight on Eddie’s shoulders he couldn’t shake. _This is going to come back to haunt you,_ a voice in the back of his head said, as Richie pulled into the dormitory parking lot. Something he’d said had sent Richie back into hysterics, which didn’t subside until after they had pulled into a parking spot and come to a stop.

“God, Eds,” Richie said, beaming, “You haven’t changed a bit.”

Despite himself, Eddie returned the smile and said, “You haven’t either.”

His response softened the massive grin on Richie’s face into something smaller yet warmer. “So…” Richie said, drawing the one word out as he averted his eyes from Eddie’s face. His hands moved from the steering wheel to fiddle with the hem of his shirt. “I still – do you have my number?”

“Uh,” Eddie paused, but found he didn’t have to think about it long before answering, “Yeah, I have it still.”

“Okay, good, good!” Richie nodded his head, seemingly to himself, and then turned in his seat to face the windshield again. Eddie could tell this was it, the end of the conversation, he had to get out of the car now, but – in spite of his bone-deep exhaustion – something kept him from going right away. “So, you’ll, uh, text me? Like, if you need something, y’know, you can, uh –,”

“Yes,” Eddie took mercy on Richie and cut his rambling off, “I’ll text you, Richie. After I’ve had a long… _long_ night’s sleep.”

With that, Eddie undid his seatbelt and popped the passenger side door open. Clambering out of the car was a semi-awkward affair given that he couldn’t use his left arm to balance himself, but it didn’t take too long for him to be standing alone in the parking lot, staring back at Richie and desperately trying to conjure up something to say before he left. Richie, like always, beat him to the punch.

“Hey, it, it really was good to see you again,” he said, uncharacteristically sincere, “I’m really glad you managed to convince your mom to let you come here.”

“Oh,” Eddie said, his hands clenching subconsciously at his side as he fought to keep the dread off of his face, “Thanks. It was… good to see you, too. Really.”

They said their goodnights and their goodbyes – Eddie making yet another promise to text Richie the next day – but he was barely aware of what he was saying or doing. It was like he was watching himself through a fog as he slammed the car door back shut and waved a final farewell to Richie through the window. _This isn’t going to come back to haunt me,_ he thought to himself, watching as Richie backed away from the curb, his car disappearing into the night. _It already is._

**Author's Note:**

> "this is going to be your les mis" - ernie, sealing my fate


End file.
